Monday, February 26, 2007

Another Inconvenient Truth

Most of the light bulbs in my house are compact fluorescent bulbs. I own an electric weedeater and, at a cost approaching $200, just purchased an electric lawn mower. I'm looking into a solar system on my roof, although the cost may be prohibitive. In November, when I was looking at new cars, I gave serious consideration to a hybrid Ford Escape.

I'm all about reasonable conservation measures. I'm all about renewable energy, specifically solar, and nuclear. I believe these things not because of any fear of so-called global warming, but because there's no reason to pollute the environment if we can reasonably avoid doing so.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

Conservation is just for us peons. We should listen to our betters.

Hat tip to Instapundit (see blogroll at left).

Update, 2/27/07:

Al Gore responds to the item on his utility bill, by stressing his carbon-neutral approach...

Capt. Ed is unimpressed with Gore's response: "Purchasing offsets only means that Gore doesn't want to make the same kind of sacrifices that he's asking other families to make. He's using a modern form of indulgences in order to avoid doing the penance that global-warming activism demands of others. It means that the very rich can continue to suck up energy and raise the price and the demand for electricity and natural gas, while families struggle with their energy costs and face increasing government regulation and taxation. It's a regressive plan that Gore's supporters would decry if the same kind of scheme were applied to a national sales tax, for instance."

Update #4, 3/3/07: Here are some more details about Gore's energy usage. BTW, it turns out that he purchases his eco-indulgences--I mean, carbon offsets--from a company that he himself set up! All he's doing is buying stock in his own company, a company he no doubt hopes to enrich him and his family! I do love capitalism, but not hypocrisy. So, those details:

What's maybe even more interesting is the gas bill, reported to average $1,080 a month over the last year (none of these figures, first released by a Tennessee free-market think tank, have been disputed). (calculations omitted here--Darren)

One cubic metre of natural gas emits 1.891 kg of CO2 (see page 13), so this represents a total of 27,200*1.891 = 51435.2 kg (51.4 tonnes) of CO2 emission.

By striking coincidence, this is within a whisker of total CO2 emissions per average US household - including household operations, automotive uses, and "indirect emissions" - which amount to about 118,000 pounds (53,636 kg).

The point bears repeating. Mr. Gore's natural gas-based emissions alone account for as much warming as the total due to electricity, heating, transport and "indirect" factors of an average American household.

Wow.

Update #5, 3/17/07: It just gets worse for Gore, who made a ton of money off a mine.

Al Gore Jr. received more than $500,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm near Carthage, Tenn. Now the mines have a new owner and are scheduled to reopen later this year.

Before the mines closed in 2003, they emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal.

Keep talkin', Al.

Update #6, 3/18/07: This story just gets worse and worse. Death threats and the like for merely pointing out that Al Gore is a hypocrite. No one challenges the facts. The left isn't upset that Gore uses so much energy, they're upset that it was pointed out. My contempt for these people knows no bounds.

Update #7, 3/18/07: There's at least one Brit who sees the same hypocrisy I do.

5 comments:

I say that it is typical of the patrician class to assume that rules are only meant for the plebians among us. You will see similar extravagant usage of fuel and electricity by some of the biggest advocates of "green" lifestyles. They fly on private jets, have huge homes and drive big cars. So I guess it is just us "little people" who are supposed to squeeze every last drop out of every gallon of oil. In that light, TXU is being bought just on the eve of the decision to build coal powered generation plants. First of all, they didn't want to build more plants in the first place because they are making loads of money when demand is high and supply is low. So offering to build crappy old school coal plants was basically a chance to get the local governments to shut them down-making the expenditure a moot point.All the environmental groups from Dallas to Houston leaped on board that bandwagon-totally ignoring the fact that because of their constant stonewalling, our only nearby nuclear power plant cost five times the specs and although we have abundant coal in our state, and there are efficient generators out there, the lege is on the verge of taking all coal power out of the system. It's just like the folks who want everything to shut down to conserve oil, but don't want to even consider using ANWR or offshort sites that would get us out of the Middle East and would insure us some time to develop alternatives that worked (NOT ETHANOL.)

As I’ve often said, typical left wing hypocrisy. By chance, did you see the Academy Awards on Sunday. What a long shot, but ALGORE won! And so did Melissa Etheridge for her song in his movie. Who would ever thunk it!

If you didn’t see it (and trust me, you didn’t miss much) when she was playing the song “I need to wake up” behind her was a screen flashing slogans, “Take mass transit when I can”, “Drive a hybrid car”, etc. I would have loved Fox News to count the number of limos in the parking lot idling.

Please explain to me how in the world with all the electricity, transportation and other energy expenditures, that show was "green"? In fact, if you take into consideration the length of the show and the electricity required to run TV's watching the show, I would say it was probably the least green show for its length. If they were really interested in going "green" the presentation would take place in small room with just the auditors that hold the envelopes. Awards would be given over the Internet (invented of course by Algore)and rather than flying in on their private jets and being whisked away via stretch limos. BTW, did you hear the Darryl Hannah on Sean Hannity yesterday? What a hoot. Sean asked her how Algore could justify taking private jets everywhere and having three huge houses. Her response was "well sometimes you have to get to a press conference...." Yep, just us little people are supposed to conserve. That's been the liberal attitude for sometime, but this brings it to the surface. If you didn't hear the broadcast you may want to look for a podcast of the show.